Guardian piece on why open data matters for social justice and democratic accountability

This piece was originally published in The Guardian on 20th February 2015 with the title “Five ways open data can boost democracy around the world”. For other pieces see my Guardian profile.

On 21 February, thousands of transparency activists, software developers, designers, researchers, public servants, and civil society groups are gathering at more than 100 cities around the world for the fifth global Open Data Day.

Governments around the world have a tax problem. Vast sums of money that could be used to run schools, hospitals, and deliver essential public services are lost to offshore tax havens. Recent estimates suggest that there has been a tenfold increase in the corporate use of tax havens over the past few decades. Leaks such as the Swiss HSBC files and the Luxembourg tax agreements grant us a rare snapshot of the tip of an immense and wholly submerged glacial mass.

Corporations spend billions every year trying to influence government policy around the world. Campaigners have used open data about lobbying to shine a light on the composition of the influence industry in Washington and Brussels, as well as on specific topics like lobbying around data privacy laws.

Some of the earliest and most widely cited examples of the democratic value of open data were websites built by civic hackers to track the speeches and votes of politicians. Sites like TheyWorkForYou and OpenCongress went beyond previously available parliamentary records by enabling customised email notifications, statistics, commenting and annotation.